Our house is on fire. Join the resistance: Do no harm/take no shit. My idiosyncratic and confluent bricolage of progressive politics, the collaborative commons, next generation cognitive neuroscience, American pragmatism, de/reconstruction, dynamic systems, embodied realism, postmetaphysics, psychodynamics, aesthetics. It ain't much but it's not nothing.

Obviously because Gates is now cooperating with the investigation. And Gates has some juicy dirt on the Dumpsters. Speculation is that Gates has been turned not to get Manafort but the Presidunce himself. This gets better by the day.

He also jokes about Dump's Tweets, the Russia investigation, Dump's refusal to enforce sanctions and to empower cyber security for the next election. That is, Putin is controlling Dump's puppet strings.

Catherine Keller, Professor of Constructive Theology at the Theological
School and Graduate Division of Religion of Drew University, gave the
2017 Taylor Lectures at Yale Divinity School. Her lectures explored a
“Political Theology of the Earth.” This is the third of the three-part lecture series.

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

"Congress voted overwhelmingly to impose sanctions on Russians who used
cyberattacks to interfere in our 2016 election – but the Trump
Administration hasn’t actually enforced them. I asked Admiral Mike
Rogers, our top military cyber official, what Vladimir Putin thinks of
that. His answer should concern anyone – Democrat or Republican – who
believes the Administration has a
responsibility to defend our electoral system. We need to use every tool
available to prevent Putin from interfering in our democracy ever
again."

Congress passed sanctions for Russia's deliberate cyber attack on our election, and Dump has refused to enforce them. So Warren asks Admiral Rogers what message this lack of action sends to Putin. He replied: "I believe that President Putin has come to the conclusion that there is little price to pay here, and therefore I can continue this activity." Exactly what Dump the Russian agent wants.

"David
Ray Griffin’s general argument with deconstruction [...] suffers from a
'fallacy of misplaced opposition.' He does not however engage Derrida,
who coined the term deconstruction, nor Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault,
Luce Irigaray, or Julia Kristeva, or indeed any of the French theorists
whom one thinks of as originators of the 'deconstructive postmodernism'
to which this series offers the preferred alternative. Instead, he
disputes with U.S. philosophers like Karl Popper, Wilfrid Sellars, and
Keith Campbell. They are no doubt worthy opponents. Yet their questions,
terms, and analytic methods simply do not represent what is known as
'deconstruction.' [...] For he has mounted the argument against a
'deconstruction' of his own invention."

He wants $1.5 trillion in spending but only $200 billion comes from federal funding. The rest is private investment, and in return they get to privatize that infrastructure and charge we the people user fees for roads and bridges. It's yet another giant scam giveaway to the wealthy while dumping on everyone else. It's just great for them but not at all for America. And as usual, Reich has real solutions to our infrastructure problems that work for we the people.

Jennifer Rubin is a conservative opinion writer. She discusses Dump's heroic claim of running into the line of fire. She makes clear that for Dump everything is about him. She notes his 5-time military deferral for bone spurs and his incessant fears about everything. So Dump has to compensate with ridiculous boasting. But he can't even stand up to Russia. He is a coward and everyone knows it.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Shortly
after he declared that he would have run into a Florida high school
unarmed to thwart a mass shooting, Donald J. Trump announced that he was
planning a parade in Washington, D.C., to celebrate his hypothetical
act of heroism.

“Anyone can act with bravery in
the moment,” Trump told reporters in the White House. “But it takes a
very special kind of hero to tell people about the incredibly brave
thing he would have done weeks after the thing happened.”

He
added that it was one of his greatest regrets that bone spurs prevented
him from serving in the Vietnam War, “because the really courageous
things I would have done during that war would have been off the
charts.”

“As soon as the Tet Offensive
happened, I would have run unarmed right into that mess,” he said. “We
probably would have won the war right after I did that.”

Trump said that the parade he was ordering would honor not only him but all of America’s “last responders.”

According
to a new poll, Trump’s assertion that he would have run into the
Florida high school unarmed was believed by his daughter Ivanka.

The times they are a changin.' Vocal Florida student shooting survivor now has more Twitter followers than the NRA. The students have been hear and they're only going to get louder until those who support the NRA are voted out of office.

And without a gun! Sure he would, just like he got out of doing military service for a bogus bone spurs deferral. Cowardly Dump even runs away from high school students who criticize him, let alone an armed mad man. The bigger the brag the smaller the courage (and penis).

At first I thought this was an Onion piece but it is frighteningly real. Retired Lieutenant General William Boykin has said that Jesus will return carrying at assault rifle leading a mighty Army in the second coming. And Jesus was directly responsible for the US 2nd Amendment. Jesus was also "ripped, tough, strong man’s man with big, bulging biceps, big ole veins popping out of his arms, thin waist, strong shoulders,’ who smelled bad!” Jesus f___ing Christ indeed.

The Intercept got a Koch document about their braggadocio. They are proud to have bought off Congress and Dump to rollback pollution protections, approve oil pipelines, get better tax breaks, withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement and more. See the link for how the Kochs have achieved this.

"According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the federal government will run out of money even sooner than expected, thanks to the new tax legislation, which is estimated to lead to a fall in revenue of $136 billion in 2018." As to all that hype about the cuts stimulating growth and tax revenue: "That’s wishful thinking. So is most Republican rhetoric around tax cutting."

Yet what Dump and Repugnantans have enacted is exactly more of the same. If you like their economic plan they you obviously like getting pissed on. Please see your doctor soon about this masochistic tendency.

Sunday, February 25, 2018

Detailed fact check by Bloomberg Politics. The Steele dossier was not part of the original FBI investigation into Page. It was part of the initial FISA application, but it was only one source of several in seeking the warrant. It was also noted in the application that the dossier had political motivations. "Several of the points from the dossier had been corroborated through other investigative avenues," contrary to Repugnantan lies.

Good history of how the 2nd Amendment came to be and why. It's no wonder why many gun nuts are also racist white nationalists.

"The real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it says 'State' instead of ' Country' [...] was to preserve the slave patrol militias in the
southern states, which was necessary to get Virginia’s vote. Founders
Patrick Henry, George Mason, and James Madison were totally clear on
that . . . and we all should be too."

Reich understands why people voted for him given the promises Dump made. But this video also aptly demonstrates that Dump has broken those promises by doing exactly the opposite. Facts are provided but we know all too well that facts have no effect on Dumpsters. Fortunately facts do effect those with a discerning mind, and there are a few of them that were fooled by Dump too but will be fooled no longer.

Expose on the big money behind the upcoming and previous, similar Supreme Corp cases. And not surprisingly the agenda is to neuter unions that protect workers, which gets in the way of obscene profits at the public's expense. After explaining the issues in the current case, the dark money organizations behind this and previous, similar cases are revealed, all of which are backed by giant corporations and the wealthy with this specific agenda. As usual, follow the money and it all becomes plain as day. It concludes:

"The decision in this case will determine the future of effective unions,
democratic decision-making in the workplace, and the preservation of
good, middle-class jobs in public employment."

And that is the crux of what the oligarchs want: Elimination of unions and democracy, and shitty jobs.

Saturday, February 24, 2018

It's been released. Contrary to Nunes, the FBI/DOJ minimally relied on the Steele dossier in the renewal FISA application on Carter Page. There was plenty of other evidence upon which the warrants were based, detailed in the memo. The application also detailed the political orientation of Steele's information. See it for several more details. And funny how there has been nothing on this memo in the corporate media.

It is a matter of freeloaders getting union protection at no cost. Unions have to protect all employees, not just union members. So why should union members have to pay for the services and protections of those who choose not to join? It would be fair if those who chose not be become members didn't get union protection, but the law requires unions to cover them too. And that law is specifically designed to drain unions of resources and to ultimately eliminate them. That is what this case is all about.

From this blog post."What if they [people] don’t prosper? That means they are not disciplined, and therefore cannot be moral, and so deserve their poverty. In this conservative view, the poor are seen as lazy and undeserving while the rich deserve their wealth. Responsibility is thus taken to be personal responsibility, not social responsibility. What you become is only up to you, not society. You are responsible for yourself, not for others."

Continuing the last post, following are some of the companies that are so far sticking with the NRA. Please consider pressuring them with your buying power to instead drop the NRA from their support.
Amazon, Apple, Clearent, FedEx, Google, Roku, United, YouTube. See the link for more.

The list is growing by the day. Delta and United Airlines are the latest, joining; TrueCar; First National Bank of Omaha; Enterprise, National, Hertz, Avis and Alamo car rentals; Allied and North American airlines; MetLife; Symantec; Chubb; Wyndham Hotel Group. This is how you win against the NRA and other big money groups; hit them in their money belt.

Senator Warren narrates this episode of Whois from NowThisPolitics. Mulvaney is the right-wing nut job, the head of both the Office of Management and Budget as well as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Warren gives his history and just what he's doing to destroy the agencies he heads, along with public protections, to pay off himself and the rich.

"It
is not that there are some objects within the grasp of our cognitive
capacities as well as some beyond them, but rather that the very concept
of an object is something established by these capacities. It is not
that parts of the world might not
correspond to our linguistic and conceptual frameworks but that the idea
of a structure of reality independent of these practices is
incoherent." -- Jan Westerhoff Nāgārjuna's Madhyamaka, p. 207.

And then there's Thakchoe's paper on semantic nominalism. The abstract:

"The commons lies at the heart of a major cultural and social shift now
underway. People’s attitudes about corporate property rights and
neoliberal capitalism are changing as cooperative endeavors — on digital
networks and elsewhere — become more feasible and attractive. [...] A new breed of commoners is building the vision of a very different kind
of society, project by project. This new universe of social activity
is being built on the foundation of a very different ethics and social
logic than that of homo economicus — the economist’s fiction that we are all selfish, utility-maximizing, rational materialists. [...] The wealth of the commons is not accumulated like capital; its vitality
comes from being circulated. As I describe in my new book, Think Like a
Commoner, the story of our time is the rise of the commons as a new way
to emancipate oneself from predatory markets and to collaborate with
peers to protect and expand one’s shared wealth."

So they say here, and on a par with Egypt, the Philippines, Venezuela, Russia and China. Dump "marks a new era of human rights regression." This includes Dump's views on the rights of women, LGBTQ, immigrants and Muslims. See the link for details.

The above and following is from The Onion. While satirically funny, it's also a clear warning sign of the very real danger of this preposterous notion of arming school teachers. The NRA's leadership are truly unstable gun nuts that are complicit in killing children, no exaggeration.

"FAIRFAX, VA—According to sources, local man Wayne LaPierre, an
individual with a long history of unstable and dangerous behavior,
revealed a detailed plot this week to bring semiautomatic weapons into
schools. The disturbed man has reportedly been carefully planning this
plot for months and has published numerous ranting posts to his website
in which he lays out, in explicit detail, his desire to bring numerous
guns into school hallways and classrooms. While the crazed individual
has, as of press time, not yet acted on his plan, sources confirmed he
has every intention of doing so in the near future and will stop at
nothing to see his plot fulfilled. Additional reports have suggested
that the unstable man may have also been helped in his planning by a
number of accomplices in the United States Congress."

For example, guns are banned in the Blight House, the Repugnantan National Convention, Mar-a-Lago, the US Capitol building, and in Repugnantan town halls. It's ok to ban guns in places that protect these hypocrites, but not for our children.

Thursday, February 22, 2018

See this Intercept podcast including transcript. I prefer the latter because I can read much faster. There is also a link to the video therein. The blurb:

"James Risen and Glenn Greenwald have both won Pulitzer Prizes.
They both have found themselves in the crosshairs of the U.S. government
for their journalism. And they both write for The Intercept. But Jim
and Glenn have taken very different approaches to covering the
Trump/Russia story. This week on Intercepted, they go head-to-head in a
debate. Glenn is one of the most high-profile critics of the official
story that has been put forward by the U.S. intelligence community, the
Democrats, and many media outlets, including some of this country’s most
powerful papers and news channels. Jim battled both the Bush and Obama
administrations — under threat of imprisonment — for refusing to name
his sources in some of the most sensitive national security reporting of
the modern era. Jim broke a key story on a secret NSA channel to Russia
and his first column for The Intercept, about the Trump/Russia investigation, posed the question: Is Donald Trump a traitor?"

The US women's hockey team wins gold by beating Canada in overtime shootout. Mikaela Shiffrin wins the silver in the super combined with a great slalom performance. Unfortunately Lindsey Vonn missed a gate in the slalom and was out. Jamie Anderson gets a silver in the women's big air competition. David Wise comes back on his last run to take the gold in men's freestyle half pipe. See the video here.

These kids are validly concerned and doing something about it. Since the Repugnantans usually depict them as lazy and entitled, and the kids are dispelling that lie, then the next strategy is to call them paid actors with an agenda. That's not working either you Repugnantan bastards.

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

"The path of concentration involves the stabilization and quiescence
of the mind through the development of one-pointedness and absorption in
a single object of meditation. Attention is repeatedly restricted,
narrowed and focused until a kind of oneness or merger is achieved in a
series of trance states known as the eight "jhanas" or realms of
absorption. The experience is of progressively more sublime feelings of
relaxation, tranquillity, contentment and bliss, culminating in
"formless states" of infinite space, infinite consciousness,
nothingness, and "neither perception nor non-perception" (Goleman,
1988). A certain degree of training in concentration, or "samadhi," is
seen as indispensable in Buddhist meditation, but the development of
only concentration is recognized as a temptation to be avoided because
of the seductive and deceptive nature of these states.

This article discusses how we must properly frame a new economic vision if we want to garner the support necessary to enact it. You can download the full report at the link. The two complementary, broad story lines are "resisting corporate power" and "meeting our needs."

On the first:

"This story centres on how the economy
is both unfair and broken and lays blame squarely on corporate power
and wealthy elites. It argues that the economic system has been unfairly
influenced by a powerful few for their own benefit, and that this
manipulation is the source of the economy’s problems. This story draws
either on the valueof Economic Strength or the value of Equality as the rationale for supporting progressive policies and uses a reprogramming metaphor to show how the economy has been intentionally designed—and can be redesigned— through policy decisions."

It's out and it's not good. Sea level rise is accelerating and “temperatures over Europe and North America today are the highest they have been in 11,000 years.” There's also an increase in intensity and severity of storms. So yeah, let's just deny and ignore this like it's just a natural cycle that will turn around without interference. Just apply laissez faire economics to the whether.

Remember when he promised not to do this. Well his budget is available for everyone to see and the facts are quite the contrary. I know, Dumpsters will call this reality fake news and keep they head in the sand (and up their asses).

"He proposes cuts of over $1.8 trillion to the three programs. On top of
that, he proposes to slash Meals on Wheels, home heating assistance, and
other programs on which seniors rely. It is noteworthy that Republicans
just passed, for almost the same price tag, a huge tax giveaway to
their donors. So that’s the Republican plan: save money by gutting
programs for the elderly and transfer the savings to the billionaire
class.”

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

The districts were formerly gerrymandered by the Repugnantans to attain a lopsided victory in an otherwise fairly balanced State. The Supreme Court ordered them to re-draw them or they would do it themselves. Since the Repugs refused to do it it was done for them.

"Democrats couldn’t have asked for much more from the new map. It’s
arguably even better for them than the maps they proposed themselves.
Over all, a half-dozen competitive Republican-held congressional
districts move to the left, endangering several incumbent Republicans,
one of whom may now be all but doomed to defeat, and improving
Democratic standing in two open races."

"Special counsel Robert Mueller has filed a charge against lawyer Alex
Van Der Zwaan for lying to investigators about his interaction with
former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates in September 2016. CNN's Jessica
Schneider reports."

Amazing, isn't it? Since the surviving Florida students are speaking up for gun control there is now a repugnantan smear campaign against them claiming they are being funded and provoked by George Soros! This video shows one of their spokes-villains throwing out this outlandish theory, which the video below is of said students refuting the nut job conspiracy theory.

By Eric Beinhocker. Subtitled "The rise of rentiers and the destruction of the middle class." He thinks Ayn Rand would be aghast at what today passes for free enterprise! Today's corporations are not bastions of independent, innovative entrepreneurs winning the competitive race but giant corporations paying off government to maintain oligopolies. Rand wrote specifically against this phenomenon in Atlas Shrugged. Of course these oligarchs distort Rand's idealism as cover for what they are doing but they are nothing like Rand's hero in the book.

"Trickle-down economics may work in textbook economic theory with
ivory-tower assumptions about perfectly rational people and perfectly
efficient markets. But in the real world of politics and interests, it
simply provides a cover story for rentier economics. It dresses up
anti-market behavior in free-market rhetoric."

By Chris Hedges. An excellent explanation on why and how Dump came to power, given how most of us no longer trust the establishment because of how we've been so badly neglected and abused. So instead of focusing on the cause of this problem we are led by our establishment induced poverty to blame each other under the flag of fascism. Some excerpts below. Sound at all familiar? Continue reading at the link on how we fight it, which sounds a lot like Sanders and Warren.

"She [Clara Zetkin] warned that the longer the stagnation and rot of a dysfunctional
democracy went unaddressed, the more attractive fascism would become.
And as 21st-century America’s own capitalist democracy disintegrates,
replaced by a naked kleptocracy that disdains the rule of law, the
struggle of past anti-fascists mirrors our own. History has amply
illustrated where political paralysis, economic decline, hypermilitarism
and widespread corruption lead."

According to this survey of 200 political scientists from "the American Political Science Association’s section on presidents and executive politics." I They rate on a scale of 1 to 100, with Dump receiving an average score of 12.34. Even conservatives didn't think much of Dump, voting him just 5 from the bottom. So you are the best at something Conald Dump: Being the worst Presidunce ever!

Monday, February 19, 2018

The global economy is in crisis. The exponential exhaustion of natural
resources, declining productivity, slow growth, rising unemployment, and
steep inequality, forces us to rethink our economic models. Where do we
go from here? In this feature-length documentary, social and economic
theorist Jeremy Rifkin lays out a road map to usher in a new economic
system.

A Third Industrial Revolution is unfolding with the convergence of three
pivotal technologies: an ultra-fast 5G communication internet, a
renewable energy internet, and a driverless mobility internet, all
connected to the Internet of Things embedded across society and the
environment.

This 21st century smart digital infrastructure is giving rise to a
radical new sharing economy that is transforming the way we manage,
power and move economic life. But with climate change now ravaging the
planet, it needs to happen fast. Change of this magnitude requires
political will and a profound ideological shift.

A powerful, profound statement by Robert Reich, copied below, on what America once was, what it has become, and hopefully what it can be yet again. Amen brother Reich.

"When Trump
and his followers refer to “America,” what do they mean? Some
see a country of white English-speaking Christians.Others
want a land inhabited by self-seeking individuals free to accumulate as much
money and power as possible, who pay taxes only to protect their assets from
criminals and foreign aggressors. Others
think mainly about flags, national anthems, pledges of allegiance, military
parades, and secure borders.

Trump
encourages a combination of all three – tribalism, libertarianism, and loyalty. But the
core of our national identity has not been any of this. It has been found in the
ideals we share – political equality, equal opportunity, freedom of speech and
of the press, a dedication to open inquiry and truth, and to democracy and the
rule of law.

We are
not a race. We are not a creed. We are a conviction – that all people are
created equal, that people should be judged by the content of their character
rather than the color of their skin, and that government should be of the
people, by the people, and for the people. Political
scientist Carl Friedrich, comparing Americans to Gallic people, noted that “to
be an American is an ideal, while to be a Frenchman is a fact.” That
idealism led Lincoln to proclaim that America might yet be the “last best hope”
for humankind. It prompted Emma Lazarus, some two decades later, to welcome to
American the world’s “tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe
free.”

It
inspired the poems of Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes, and the songs of Woody
Guthrie. All turned their love for America into demands that we live up to our
ideals. “This land is your land, this land is my land,” sang Guthrie. “Let
America be America again,” pleaded Hughes: “The land that never has been yet –
/And yet must be – the land where every man is free. / The land that’s mind –
the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME –.”

That
idealism sought to preserve and protect our democracy – not inundate it with
big money, or allow one party or candidate to suppress votes from rivals, or
permit a foreign power to intrude on our elections. It spawned a patriotismthat once required all of us take on a fair share of the burdens of
keeping America going – paying taxes in full rather than seeking loopholes or
squirreling money away in foreign tax shelters, serving in the armed forces or volunteering
in our communities rather than relying on others to do the work.

In Rosenstein's announcement about the Russian indictments he said: "There is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election" (5:28). Just because the indictment didn't address the issue doesn't mean it had no effect. This recent study indeed shows that the very conduct outlined in the indictment likely did exactly that. "Our study concludes that fake news most likely did have a substantial impact on the voting decisions of a strategically important set of voters." The study was focused on former Obama voters who voted for Dump. "Our survey data show that 10 percent of these former Obama voters cast
ballots for Trump in 2016, 4 percent switched to minor parties and 8
percent did not vote." The fake news stories that flipped these voters were the following:

See the article here. It quotes the indictment: "By early to mid-2016, Defendants’ operations included supporting the
presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump ('Trump
Campaign') and disparaging Hillary Clinton” (p. 4). See the article and indictment for the timeline and the details.

82% of Londoners would use an Uber alternative that had better rights for drivers, and 54% would pay more for that ethical alternative. So reports the New Economics Foundation, which is also working on that alternative called CabFair that would be owned by the drivers.

It's right there in his budget. And this after giving $6 trillion in the tax scam to the 1%. How caring and compassionate our Presidunce is. To the rich, that is. The rest of us can literally freeze to death. Keep in mind the Repugnantans are complicit in this and get out and vote this year.

Subtitle above of an interview with de Waal and Thompson titled: Primates, monks and the mind. Therein they discuss the development of empathy from primates to monks. While the former provides a foundation for the latter, the latter adds on empathic capacities not in the former. (I'm also reminded of Rifkin's stages of empathy.)

Thompson: " The most basic, in a way the foundational or ground floor one, is a coupling or pairing between one’s bodily being and the being of another. This can take various forms. There are various kinds of affective and motor resonances. [...] Without it it’s hard to see how the more developed forms of empathy could arise. A second, more developed aspect, could be described as involving some kind of imaginative transposition or movement to the place of another, so that you put yourself in someone else’s shoes, imaginatively speaking. And then, third, this perspective-taking can become more complex in the sense that you don’t simply put yourself in somebody else’s shoes, but you put yourself in somebody else’s shoes such that you comprehend how they see you. Here there’s a kind of reiteration of empathy, so that you have an empathetic experience of someone else’s empathetic experience of you.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz
Report)—In a unique
accord, the billionaire Koch brothers and the National Rifle Association
have reached a timeshare agreement over the ownership of House Speaker
Paul Ryan, representatives of both parties have confirmed.

Speaking on behalf of the Kochs, Charles Koch said that he contacted the
N.R.A.’s executive director, Wayne LaPierre, with the timeshare proposal “so
that we could all get the maximum enjoyment out of owning Paul.”

The arrangement is intended to minimize conflicts between the Kochs and
the gun group that have arisen in the past when both co-owners have
wanted to use Ryan at the same time, Koch said.“I said to Wayne, ‘This is craziness,’ ” he said. “ ‘Let’s work something
out where you get Paul half the year, and we’ll take him the other
half.’ ”

Under the timeshare deal, the Kochs will have the exclusive use of Ryan
during the months when tax cuts and environmental deregulation are put
to a vote, while the N.R.A. will have him for the months when gun
legislation is to be defeated.

Additionally, each co-owner is responsible for insuring that Ryan is
well maintained and in good condition when the other’s period of using
him commences.

Koch indicated that, if the timeshare agreement is a success, the two
parties are likely to work out a similar deal for their longtime joint
ownership of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

See Richard Wolff's article on it here. This emerging and growing mode of economic development puts businesses in the hands of those that work them. Worker self-directed enterprises (WSDE) is one form this can take. Instead of seeking solutions in government or in capitalistic oriented businesses, the goal is to give the power back to the people that make the goods and services. Employees therein directly function to democratically divide and assign labor, determine what, were and how a good is to be produced, and decide on wages, distribution of surplus and ownership.

Of course a transition to WSDEs from capitalism requires several implementing factors: Laws need to enacted to create the structural framework; school curriculums need to educate future workers on the societal need for WSDE's and how they operate; political parties and platforms need to promote them. It's not an easy transition but a necessary one which is well on its way given the growing interest and implementation.

This is a good sign that these Senators decided to quit received corporate SuperPAC money. It's about time that other Dems are responding to the notion of representing we the people instead of corporations, even if it is just pressure from we the people motivating them. Keep up that pressure people!

Warren discusses this upcoming case, in which Supreme Corp lackey Gorsich will cast the deciding vote to defund unions. She goes into Gorsich's long history of intending just such a decimation. I like how she frames healthy unions as an issue of freedom. And Koch backed Gorsich wants to take away our freedoms. It appears that freedom only applies to the wealthy in their freedom to take away ours. Having all the money and power is not enough for them; they want all the freedom too.

Reich explores the question in this short clip. We've lost trust in our institutions because they have failed us. And they've failed us because they no longer give a shit about us, instead sucking up all the money and resources for themselves. Can we restore the common good?

Saturday, February 17, 2018

And they are getting closer with each day. Iowa is the latest State to sign on, using verbatim the American Legislative Exchange Council's (ALEC) wording.

"ALEC wants a convention called in order to push a balanced budget amendment
for Congress (though opponents argue there are simply times where the
national government has to do deficit spending for national emergencies
or defense reasons). Such austerity proposals would certainly cause deep
cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Other ideas include
allowing states to ignore certain U.S. Supreme Court decisions that they
do not agree with. ALEC has already come dangerously close
to its goal of getting the 34 states needed for a convention. Iowa’s
addition would leave if just a handful of states away from reality."

Note the phrase "well regulated," unlike the NRA wanting as little regulation as possible, preferably none. Although the NRA is like a militia, only not much regulated and not for any humane or socially responsible purpose.

Maher's new rule explores the grey area between sexual misconduct and what both men and women are programmed to believe about romance by Hollywood movies. It truly is mixed messages, just like romance itself.

He covers the indicted Russians plotting to interfere with our election, traitor Dump and his budget proving he's a pathological liar, the Environmental Destruction Agency, Dump's affairs and their payoffs, the mass shooting.

Bauwens commented on the following video by Monbiot: "Monbiot is among my favourite journalists. In this engrossing and highly
educational (and entertaining) speech he manages to take you from the
paradigmatic stories of Keynes and Neo-liberalism to how the latter has
assaulted our self-definition of what it means to be human and thus, the
crisis of alienation and loneliness all around us. He then introduces
some elements of a new story struggling to be born. This is a speech you
may well take in more than once. Why? Because it move us towards a new
‘restoration’ story that can sustain the colossal effort needed to bend
the curve of self-destructive path we are travelling, and that is
energizing."

This wiki gives a good history of it. Bruce Alderman*
discussed how metaphysical views, both east and west, saw the absolute
realm as a primal whole underlying the relative realm, or fundamental
elements from which the rest of the material realm was constructed. That
is, it expresses as the reduction of reality to our direct access to it
in toto like the metaphysical notions of eastern
meditative traditions, or our direct access to reality via
representational models of reason typical of western empirical
traditions.

Friday, February 16, 2018

This fact comes up every time there is one of these shootings. Now why do you suppose that is?

"A policy rider
that has been including in spending bills since 1996 effectively bans
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from researching
gun violence. The so called the Dickey amendment has not definitively
outlawed research on gun violence and safety, but Congress 'coincidentally' removed funding from the CDC to the exact amount it
once spent on that research. This sends the message to CDC scientists
that such research is strongly discouraged, deprioritized, and
ultimately, it is not conducted."

See this interview with Cameron Kasky. He thinks it's a GOP facade that nothing can be done about it. He's convinced they get an NRA memo after every shooting to just send 'thoughs and prayers' and 'now is not the time to talk about it.' He's right that this is the only developed country where this kind of shit happens. His school had had repeated drills for just this scenario and it did no good, plus there was an armed guard on duty. Gun control is the answer that complicit Repugnantans refuse to consider given their giant NRA pay-off.

According to this story. "The FBI recently launched an investigation to determine whether a
Russian central banker, and Putin ally, illegally funneled money through
the organization to help the Trump campaign." No collusion here, move along, see the new mass killing?

These are the very Congresspeople voting against any gun legislation. Think there's any connection between their blood money and their votes? Their worthless thoughts and prayers are pretty expensive fake sentiments. This expose gives us names and contributions. Is this one of your Congresspeople? And what are you going to do about it?

Kimmel again pleads with Congress to do something about it, meaning stricter gun laws. Quit with the BS thoughts and prayers that do nothing but gloss over the problem and never addresses it. Another of Kimmel's impassioned pleas that will fall on deaf Congressional ears due to massive financial contributions to them from the NRA. He encourages us to go to everytown.org and use it to contact Congress. If Congress doesn't respond then vote them out. NOW is the time!

Via the Special Council's office. 3 Russian companies were also indicted. They were all for seeking interference in the US political system, including the 2016 election. It's an 8-count indictment. It was noted that no American, including any on the Trump campaign, knowingly colluded with these Russians.

Good article in Behavioral Scientist, especially since it debunks the repugnantan fallacy that the mentally ill are responsible and therefore the only remedy is early treatment. (Never mind that Dump has removed the prohibition that mentally ill people cannot own a gun.) The bare truth is that owning military-style weapons is the cause of mass killings and we need to outlaw them. From the article:

"In their 2016 edited book Gun Violence and Mental Illness,
psychiatrists Liza Gold and Robert Simon summarize the evidence
debunking the myth that mental illness is a leading cause of gun
violence. As they report, less than 5% of shootings are committed by
people with a diagnosable mental illness. Like mentally healthy
offenders, the mentally ill are far more likely to shoot people they
know rather than strangers. The mentally ill are also far more likely to
be victims of gun violence rather than perpetrators. These data suggest
that the link between mental illness and mass shooting exists in our
minds, not in reality."

And this one is from a review/analysis of Damasio's book Self Comes to Mind:

"On Page 8 he says, 'I believe that conscious minds arise when a self
process is added to a basic mind process.' So, in Damasio's view the
difference between mind and consciousness is all about the self. He
defines 'mind' as the process by which the brain creates images based on
its maps, both of the body and of the world. But he says that the mind
is unconscious until it has a sense of self.

"Now, based on Damasio's definition, minds have existed for a long
time, but they weren't conscious. He says, 'A mind unwitnessed is still a
mind.' The key idea is that mind developed independently of
consciousness—or at least before it. But they're both rooted in the
physical processes of the brain, which itself evolved to maintain life.

"Damasio sees consciousness as being mind plus the self process. Thus
consciousness is more than being awake; but of course, you have to be
awake to be conscious.

"According to Damasio, consciousness requires that: 1. You are awake;
2. You have an operational mind, that is, one that makes images; and 3.
You have what he calls an 'automatic, unprompted, unreduced sense of
self.'

"He has what he calls 'core consciousness'—which he describes as
having a sense of self in the here-and-now, without a sense of past or
future—and 'autobiographical consciousness,' which includes both
personhood and identity....this way of thinking about consciousness
allows for consciousness to exist in many non-human species.... He
emphasizes that 'core consciousness does not require language.'

She compares the myth of Pocahontas to the reality, the former a means to whitewash colonization. The latter is that she was instrumental in negotiating between the tribes and the settlers. For this she was rewarded by imprisonment and rape. Later she was forced into marriage, taken to Great Britain as a token for trade relations and died at 21.

And now Pocahontas is the butt of Dump's crass and inhumane assault on Native Americans. Great speech given by someone who appreciates Natives and all people, and fights to protect their rights. Quite the contrast from that Stinking Dump.

Contrary to Dump's bullshit obfuscation, the investigation is in top gear and proceeding quickly. Even though most of it is secret, this article points out there are things we already know about that indicates it is very serious business. The bullet points are highlighted below. See the link for the informative details.

They were down by 5 points going into the free skate and this performance caught them up and won the gold by a fraction of a point. Near flawless and highly emotional, artistic routine. Again, stingy NBC won't allow embeds so see it here.

This should make America great again, unleashing a bigger swamp to prey on us. Yeah, he cares about us working people. If you believe that one, I've got a great investment opportunity for you.

"Federal penalties imposed on the largest U.S. companies for all kinds of
misconduct fell sharply during the first 12 months of the Trump
administration, with combined fines and settlements dropping to a
fraction of the levels seen during the Obama Administrations. The
Fortune 100 list of the very largest publicly traded U.S. corporations
paid $1.1 billion in penalties to federal regulatory agencies and the
Justice Department during Trump’s first year, compared to an annual
average of more than $17 billion during the Obama years."

Recall the anterior cingulate cortex's (ACC) role in meditative states from the last post. This neuroscience article by the above name claims that "self-awareness is a pivotal component of conscious experience. It is
correlated with a paralimbic network of medial prefrontal/anterior
cingulate and medial parietal/posterior cingulate cortical 'hubs' and
associated regions. Electromagnetic and transmitter manipulation have demonstrated that the
network is not an epiphenomenon but instrumental in generation of
self-awareness."

Concerning meditation and this brain network: "The new understanding of the physiology and pathophysiology of self-awareness outlined in Section 4
may lead to the application of unconventional therapeutical strategies
to increase dopaminergic activity and to improve paralimbic interaction.
These strategies include relaxation meditation like yoga nidra or
mindfulness meditation, which in independent studies have been shown to
increase dopaminergic tone and induce growth in paralimbic structures."

See Dan Brown talking about it in this video. He is also co-author in the paper "Mapping complex mind states." Some excerpts from the latter follow. Note that it does not differentiate the different aspect of 'self' as discussed by Damasio. It appears that what it means by 'self' is the autobiographical self-reference system. However Damasio would see some of these results as examples of the proto-self and core self. This neuroscience article compares Damasio's different types of self to meditative states.

"Modulation within the anterior cingulate (ACC) executive hub was observed in the gamma band range. [...] The ACC represents a core brain structure in terms of centralized executive functioning. [...] An overarching theory proposes the key interplay of the ACC in 'self-regulatory' processes, broadly defined. [...] These findings suggest enhanced executive control extending to challenging cognitive, emotional, and physical processing demands, largely observed during periods of sustained attention. Furthermore, enhanced current density within the ACC, d[orsal]ACC, and v[entral]ACC, was exclusive to the gamma-band frequency range, whereby modulation of gamma activity has been associated with increasing complexity of experimental tasks, task difficulty, and mental effort" (49).

He was in 2nd place going into his final run, the last run of the competition. He needed to beat 95.25 and he came through big time with 97.75 to win the gold. NBC didn't embed the link so you can watch it here.

"While some believe that Valentine’s Day is celebrated in the middle
of February to commemorate the anniversary of Valentine’s death or
burial–which probably occurred around A.D. 270–others claim that the
Christian church may have decided to place St. Valentine’s feast day in
the middle of February in an effort to “Christianize” the pagan
celebration of Lupercalia. Celebrated at the ides of February, or
February 15, Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus,
the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus
and Remus.

"To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman
priests, would gather at a sacred cave where the infants Romulus and
Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have been cared for by a
she-wolf or lupa. The priests would sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and
a dog, for purification. They would then strip the goat’s hide into
strips, dip them into the sacrificial blood and take to the streets, gently slapping both women and crop fields with
the goat hide. Far from being fearful, Roman women welcomed the touch
of the hides because it was believed to make them more fertile in the
coming year. Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women
in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city’s bachelors
would each choose a name and become paired for the year with his chosen
woman. These matches often ended in marriage."